Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/136

124 As soon as he found his voice, he said: "Take 'im away. Take 'im away from me."

"Now, look 'ere, Pop," she replied. "You behave yerself. 'E never would 'a' married me at all if I 'ad n't asked 'im. You behave yerself. You 're a disgrace to the fam'ly." And it was evident from her manner that she and Sutley were "the fam'ly."

It was the servant who ended the scene—and recalled them all to the proprieties—by putting her head in the door to announce: "'S retty—dinner!"

It was through Burls, of course, that the story became public. He still tells it with roars of laughter; and he is most effective when he describes how Sutley announced to old Yost that Milly and he were married, and Yost attacked the clown with his ringmaster's whip. This is almost as good as his other story of how he and Sutley were nearly lynched in Macon, once, and he saved Sutley and himself by sending the mob into convulsions of laughter with his clowning. He is truly a romantic artist.

He does not tell that he was, in his own way, almost as "soft" on Milly as Sutley was. The only hint he ever gives of it is when he says, disgustedly: "I tell you what 's the whole trouble with women: they got no sense o' humor. They don't even know good clownin' when they see it. They 're too danged matter-of-fact."

And Sutley, funnier than ever and more successful than ever, continues to work at his clowning with all the seriousness of a Russian realist. "No good clown,"